by Carl Crow
Although his relatives and neighbors did not believe his stories, there was convincing evidence of the wealth he had brought home with him. In celebration of his return there was a big family dinner party attended by all the Polos in Venice. After the servants had been sent from the room and the doors secured, Marco changed his clothing and theatrically appeared in the threadbare and tattered garments he had worn on his long journey home from China. Then he ripped the seams of his cloak and doublet and quarts of jewels - rubies, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, pearls and carbuncles - spilled on the floor like wheat from a burst sack. There were enough jewels to make a king envious. His shabby baggage was brought in and every member of the family given a piece of silk, richer than any that had ever been seen in Venice. This was but a part of the treasure he had brought with him and his riches appeared to be inexhaustible. Twenty years later he was still bringing jewels or small parcels of musk or rolls of silk brocade from some hiding place and selling them. Probably some of the precious stones he brought from China went into the jeweled decorations of the high altar of St. Mark’s which was then being completed.
As news of Marco’s riches got about, many Venetians started for China. A new continent had been discovered with almost unbelievable opportunities for wealth. They may not have known that Marco had prospered by stealing tax money from the public treasury during the periods when he was an official in the Chinese government. These early followers of Marco Polo discovered many new trade routes but there were as many pirates as honest traders among them. The peaceable Chinese were rich and easily plundered. The Venetians and Genoese did not have the field to themselves very long. Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch adventurers soon were leaders in the profitable business of piracy.
The journey undertaken by the Venetians was not an easy one. Last year I flew over Marco Polo’s route and made the trip from Rome to Rangoon in five days. He and the others who followed him traveled wearily for years to cover the same distance. The journey involved dangers so hazardous and hardships so severe that two hundred years later Admiral Columbus unsuccessfully tried to find another and better route and accidentally discovered America. They had to travel more than a third of the way around the world through many countries with strange languages and curious customs and be prepared to defend themselves against pirates and robbers at almost every stage of the journey. They had to depend on queer food and were not even certain of finding that. But they could easily ignore the difficulties when they remembered Marco Polo’s jewels and thought of the wealth to be gained at the end of the journey, and of the comforts, honors and luxuries they would enjoy when they returned home. The lure of wealth attracted many. When Columbus set sail for what he thought were the Eastern shores of China he fully expected to meet many of his countrymen who were living there.
It was not solely the search for wealth and adventure that sent people from the Mediterranean to China. When at the age of seventeen Marco set out with his father and uncle they were accompanied part of the way by two Dominican friars who had been delegated by the Pope to convert the heathen Chinese to Christianity. This companionship of traders and missionaries has continued to the present time. There was wealth to be made and there were souls to be saved and each of these opportunities aroused the enthusiasms of men. The missionaries made a bad start and the two Dominicans were unworthy predecessors of the long line of devout and heroic men who followed them. They were fatigued by the first part of the journey and frightened by the dangers ahead of them. They told the Polos that they were ill and returned home, giving Marco’s father some sacred objects to take to the Emperor of China.
But when Marco returned to Venice he told of the surprising existence of churches of Nestorian Christians in China and the Roman priests who then went to this strange country had a new incentive for their work. The heretical sect of Nestorians was an ancient enemy of Rome and the fact that it existed in this remote part of the world was a provocative challenge to the church even more urgent than the existence of millions who were followers of Buddha. This feud between Rome and Syria was the first of many foreign controversies - ecclesiastical, political and commercial - to be fought out on the soil of China with which the Chinese themselves had no interest and no concern. It was also one of the least important. The heretics were not so powerful as they were thought to be and the attention of the Roman priests was devoted to the heathen. No descendants could be found of the Syrians who had formed a colony in China and established Nestorian churches. Nor could any trace be found of the descendants of the Jews who had fled from Babylon to China in the first great flight of that persecuted race. There were synagogues - as there were Nestorian churches - but the worshipers were Chinese in whom it was impossible to find a faint trace of Jewish or Syrian ancestry. China had absorbed them as she has many other races.
In the centuries that followed thousands of Roman Catholic priests went to China, learned the language, adopted Chinese customs in food and clothing and outwardly appeared to merge into the native population. They ate with chopsticks, shaved their foreheads and grew queues and wore the baggy Chinese trousers and cotton quilted coats and jackets. They built humble chapels, preached their faith and made converts and died obscurely. To their converts they were men of God, but to the great mass of Chinese all foreigners were lumped together as foreign devils and made the target of unruly mobs.
The priests who traveled so far from the Mediterranean were prepared to carry the blessings of civilization as well as of Christianity to a people they assumed would be both heathen and ignorant. But as soon as they reached China they were thrown into contact with a civilization much higher than that of Europe, just as Marco Polo had contended that it was. The first printed book was still to be produced in Europe but the libraries of the Buddhist monasteries were full of them, printed from carved wooden blocks. There were printing presses in all the larger Buddhist establishments. Throughout the country scholars constituted a class honored above all others. It was no place for barefooted bead-telling monks such as had been sent to convert the pagan tribes of Ireland. Only men of the highest intelligence and the greatest learning could escape the scorn of the Chinese literati. That was a difficult lesson for Rome to learn, but stupid policies of the earlier popes were rectified by later ones and the scholarly Jesuits were sent to China to put their scientific knowledge at the service of the Emperor. They corrected Chinese ideas of astronomy and under their direction Chinese workmen constructed an astronomical observatory equal to any in Europe. Father Veribest became the head of the Chinese Bureau of Mathematics while Schall, Ricci and scores of other priests acted as trusted advisors to emperors or to high officials.
They taught the Chinese and also learned from them. The huge storehouses of Chinese history, philosophy and literature had not even been inventoried but it offered to the foreign scholar riches as enticing as the jewels which fell from the seams of Marco Polo’s ragged garments. The work of research and translation of Chinese learning undertaken by the priests has occupied more centuries than the building of any great cathedral in Europe, and it is still going on. The Catholic church could rest its reputation for scholarship solely on the work of its priests in China. Protestant missionaries who followed much later ably carried on this tradition. It was through the missionaries that China learned of Christianity and also through them that the West learned of the philosophy of Confucius and of the many other Chinese sages.
Priests and traders arrived together but once they were on the soil of China they traveled different routes. The methods of the earlier traders were not those of the peaceful Chinese merchant. They carried little or no cargo with them but came back with a great deal of wealth. The Chinese called them pirates and built watch towers along the coast to look out for their approach and warn the people to flee. At one time they were so troublesome that, by order of the Emperor, all inhabitants along the seacoast moved several miles inland and all houses were destroyed so that when the pirates arrived there was no booty for th
em to take and they sailed away empty-handed. It was the same “scorched earth” policy that Chinese used many centuries later in effectively hampering the Japanese invasion starting in 1937. The priests who had came to China so peacefully finally became as troublesome as the pirates, though for entirely different reasons. Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans bickered with each other over the semi-religious reverence of Chinese children for parents and of Chinese scholars for Confucius and then quarreled violently over which Chinese character should be used in translating the word God. Either in a spirit of helpfulness or in the pride of his scholarship, the Emperor attempted to solve the latter problem but the priests were not content to accept his decision and the whole question was referred to the Pope who didn’t know one Chinese character from another. He decided against the Emperor and the exasperated Son of Heaven promptly dissolved all the Catholic establishments in his empire and sent the priests home. The traders went with them, for the righteous indignation of the Emperor was all-embracing. Only the Portuguese remained in Macao, a tiny colony which had been leased in 1557 and made immense wealth through trade with Japan as well as China. If it had not been for this unfortunate controversy and if the priests had been a little less unbending in the matter of old Chinese rites and ceremonies, Christianity might at that time have replaced Buddhism in China.
By the time trade with China was resumed on any kind of recognized and legalized basis, the relative positions of the foreigners concerned had changed. Spain, Holland and Portugal were no longer great maritime powers for a series of events had made Britain the successor of them all and it was at the insistence of Britain that Chinese exclusion was broken down. The right to trade at Canton was granted under severe and humiliating restrictions. Little by little ports were opened, almost invariably as the result of military pressure and more privileges granted to traders and missionaries. The era of foreign trade and the development of modern China began in 1842 when a British fleet sailed up the Yangtze and after a few minor battles the Treaty of Nanking was signed. Americans shared in the privileges gained by British military and diplomatic victories. An ancient taunt that while we never went to war with China we benefited by all of Britain’s wars has just enough truth in it to sting.
While they competed fiercely with each other in trade the British and Americans worked together on many matters of common interest and during the greater part of the past hundred years there has been an effective if unofficial Anglo-American alliance in the Far East. Official circles in London and Washington may have had no official knowledge of this alliance, nor did it necessarily involve any definite agreements or collusion between the diplomatic and consular officials of the two countries. It came about because British and Americans thought in the same way about a lot of old-fashioned things such as justice and right. The International Settlement of Shanghai was the result of joint efforts by representatives of the two nations. Between them they made English the commercial language of the country. The British came to China by way of India, bringing with them their ideas of caste and color prejudice and the necessity for maintaining the prestige of the white man. They were the leaders in trade and the organizers of clubs and the Americans adopted or absorbed British ideas and manners to an extent they never realized until they returned home and often found that they were mistaken for Englishmen.
The tempo of commerce was set by the restricted speed and infrequent arrivals of the sailing ships. Competition seeped in very slowly and profits were huge though sometimes offset by equally huge losses. Some of the early firms became so wealthy, maintained such luxurious establishments and gained such a reputation for generosity that they became known as “the princely houses.” They set a high standard of conduct as well as of living for all the other business houses and had much beside their wealth to justify the classification that had been given them. The piratical element of trade survived in the persons of adventurers who came from many countries with picturesque schemes to make fortunes quickly. While the pattern of the schemes presented different pictures, the design was almost invariably the same - to part some Chinese from his money. A great many succeeded and a few went to jail.
Diplomats also came. Before the Treaty of Nanking was signed they were treated by the haughty Chinese officials as “tribute bearers from barbarian tribes” who were exhorted to “tremble and obey” and warned not to disturb the tranquility of the Son of Heaven. The diplomats struggled for more than a century to gain a grudging admission that the white men were equal to the Chinese. For the following century the Chinese struggled to gain an admission that they were equal to the foreigners. When they began the system of negotiating under the guns of warships the diplomats were looked upon as impetuous representatives of bullying nations, who had to be cajoled and placated and kept in a good humor because of the murderous gunboats they had at their command. They never got over the barbarian habit of shouting and pounding the table when things didn’t go to suit them. From the official Chinese point of view all foreigners were troublesome but the diplomats were the worst.
China solved many of the problems created by the presence of the foreigner by the simple process of employing foreigners to solve them for her. Marco Polo was only the first of thousands to be in the service of the Chinese government in one capacity or another. Frederick Ward, an American, began the organization of a modern Chinese army to put down the Taiping Rebellion and Captain Charles Gordon, a British army officer, completed the task. Anson Burlingame, an American, was commissioned by the Chinese government to negotiate treaties with the European governments. Robert Hart, an Irishman, organized the customs and postal services. These are only a few of many who have held high positions in the Chinese government. There are hundreds if not thousands of many nationalities on the government pay rolls. To most of them China is their adopted country which they serve as faithfully as they would their own.
Every foreigner went to China with a consciousness of his own racial and mental superiority and a smug satisfaction in the belief that there were many things he could teach the Chinese. The British and Americans were more numerous than any other group and in the beginning of this era nothing had occurred to suggest to either that his way of life did not represent perfection. But seven centuries after the visit of Marco Polo the foreigner was still learning from the Chinese.
The missionaries did teach them many things - medicine and education, and though without design, a desire for foreign products which helped the trader to sell more goods. Even the traders taught the Chinese cooks how to prepare foreign meals, the boy to make cocktails and the tailors how to make foreign clothing. Each thought that he was playing his part in modernizing China, and it seldom occurred to him that he was being changed by his life in China. The foreign resident did not lose his racial characteristics but life in China made him different. A group of China Coast residents may represent a half-dozen nationalities but all display the same philosophy of life which has a distinctly Oriental tinge. While affecting to disdain the ways of the Chinese they unconsciously adopted them for their own. Perhaps China taught a great deal more than she learned.
From the Chinese point of view they were quite justified in classing all foreigners as barbarians. Few of them even knew how to enter a room or to drink a cup of tea or receive a card correctly. Every act betrayed their uncouthness. Their manners were abominable but the Chinese tolerated them and found their curious customs amusing. They were never hated to the extent that their actions justified hatred because in their human relationships the Chinese are the most tolerant of people. A number were killed by mobs but not a fraction of the number who foolishly or provocatively invited this fate. The many different nationalities would have been confusing to the Chinese but for the fact that they classified them all as “foreign devils” and paid no more attention to them than was necessary. The influence of foreigners was never as important as the foreigners thought it was. China lumbered on like the slow-moving water buffalo which occasionally snorts and switches it
s tail if the flies get too troublesome. But in the end Chinese exclusion was broken down, not by the foreign battleships but by the contacts with the foreign business men and missionaries - contacts which in the main were friendly and intimate.
The classification of “foreign devils” was general and tentative and was applied by individual Chinese only to foreigners he did not know. With their red faces, protruding eyes and absurdly complicated and uncomfortable clothing all foreigners had the grotesque appearance of devils. On first sight it was impossible for the Chinese to look on them as human beings like themselves. Blondes were the worst because they were the farthest removed from what the Chinese believed to be the natural appearance of a human being. But all were bad enough. There are many country places where the foreigner is still an amusing novelty. On visits into the interior little Chinese girls, after one look at me, have screamed with terror and run to their mothers. Small boys have shouted picturesque insults from a safe distance. Old men have managed to keep their faces straight when in my presence and then roared with laughter as soon as my back was turned. I suppose every other foreigner who has wandered away from the treaty ports has had the same chastening experience and has found, as I did on hundreds of occasions, that a smile or a laugh was always accepted as convincing proof of one’s humanity.